Neo Psychedelic

Description

As Punk's initial momentum dissipated in the late '70s and early '80s, artists on both sides of the Atlantic who were too young to remember the 1960s firsthand began mining the era for inspiration. Emulating the nuggets they unearthed in their older siblings' record collections, these bands brought jangling guitars, swirling keyboards and a mind- expanding ethos to an underground that had been dominated by Punk's three-chord aggression for all of recent memory. Each of the Neo Psychedelic bands latched onto different parts of the '60s' multi-hued legacy as their jumping-off point, but whether they favored concise, harmony-rich pop tunes (The Three O'Clock, Rain Parade) droning, existential jams (Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes), Syd Barrett-esque whimsy (The Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock) or even kaleidoscopic parody (XTC alter-ego's, the Dukes of Stratosphear), they infused their sound with enough of New Wave's vivaciousness and Punk's homegrown aesthetic to retain their enthusiasm for the music without it dissolving into pure revivalism.